Everything will be awesome (in 2017): 'Lego Movie' sequel gets date

Wyldstyle, voiced by Elizabeth Banks, in a scene from "The Lego Movie."

Wyldstyle, voiced by Elizabeth Banks, in a scene from "The Lego Movie." (Courtesy of Warner Bros. Picture / AP)

Steven Zeitchik

The first movie was made for about $60 million and came out this month. There’s no budget yet for “The Lego Movie” sequel, but Warner Bros. certainly has big ideas for the date.

The studio has scheduled the follow-up to the building-block blockbuster for May 26, 2017, a prime Memorial Day slot that Hollywood typically uses for its highest-profile fare. The comedic screenwriters Jared Stern (“The Internship”) and Michelle Morgan (“Girl Most Likely) are on board to write the new movie, with no director hired as yet.

There is ample precedent for a first-quarter release getting a spring-summer or holiday sequel; “The Hunger Games” came out in March but its sequel, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” was elevated to November.

Since coming out two weeks ago, Phil Lord and Chris Miller's animated "The Lego Movie," starring Chris Pratt as a cheerful rule-follower and Will Ferrell as an evil ruler, has taken in more than $150 million in the U.S. and has become the year's biggest hit.

The spring 2017 date will mean a 3+-year gap between films, a bit of an anomaly in a culture where sequels can come as quickly as two years after the original. But the first film required extensive animation work, done by the Australian company Animal Logic, and also saw years of development as writers Dan and Kevin Hageman wrote a first draft before Lord and Miller came on board to make their pass.

The Hagemans, incidentally, work on the Cartoon Network’s Lego “Ninjago” series, and though there’s a movie version of that in development, this is expected to be a different beast that more closely resembles the feel and arc of the first movie. That film's ending suggested a sequel featuring Duplo could be in the works; it remains to be seen if that becomes an element in the new movie.